Grumpy Vancouver has secret squad of Olympics enthusiasts

My favourite kinds of stories are the ones that break stereotypes. In my fantasy world, we’d constantly be covering stories about Calgarians having the highest rate of art-museum visitorship in the country, Torontonians taking more yoga classes than anyone else, single mothers being more likely to get promotions to management positions and the like.

So this story I have in today’s Globe — about the high rates of Olympic volunteerism here in laid-back Vancouver — particularly appealed. I stumbled across this when I was researching a previous story about how many city employees were being drafted to do Olympics work in different municipalities. In Surrey was, “Only two. Our volunteers are doing everything else.” That piqued my curiosity.